Swaziland, Kyrgystan, Tuvalu, and Other Weird Places

As part of my last semester, I am taking a class on using computers and technology effectively in the classroom. One of our assignments is to do a learning project – we have to learn something over the next couple months.

I have chosen to learn about the world we live in! I’m going to learn the names AND locations of all 196 countries of the world, and their capitals. Depending on how effective I am, I would love to learn even more about these countries, but I will play that by ear. I have chosen to do world geography for a couple reasons:

When I meet someone from a new country, I want to know WHERE that country is instead of vaguely knowing it is in Asia for instance.

I want to be more aware of the world I live in. When I watch the news and they are talking about an event in a country (for example, the tragic shooting in Burkina Faso this past week), I want to know where that is, what it is normally like there, etc.

This is something I will not just use this semester, but for the rest of my life. Being more culturally and globally aware is something that will benefit me way past when this class ends

When I started this project last week, I wanted to know how much I already knew. I took a countries of the world quiz in which all you have to do is type in as many countries as you can think of in 15 minutes. You do not even have to know WHERE these countries are, you just have to name them. I could name 68 countries out of 196. Pretty pathetic.The green in the picture below are the countries I could name, and the red are the ones that I did not name.

My knowledge of capitals of these countries of the world was even worse. I could name 11 out of 196. ELEVEN!! I obviously have much to learn.

I have downloaded an app on my phone called World Maps in which you can pick a continent and it asks you to find a certain country. You can start with the top couple countries, and then increase the amount as you master them. I’m hoping to master all the countries in the world in the next week or so (good enough that someone could point to a country on a map and I would be able name it) and then move on to the capitals!

Has anyone else studied world geography or have any good ideas/apps/sites in which could help? Let me know in the comments!